The surfaces of webs are often treated to enhance their usefulness. For instance, the surfaces can be printed, embossed, or have various chemicals, lotions or emollients applied to them amongst other treatment possibilities. Frequently, in a product sold with two or more webs combined together, such as a three-ply facial tissue, it can be desirable to treat the middle ply. For instance, virucidal solutions can be a useful treatment to reduce the spread of cold viruses. Virucidal solutions can be irritating to noses; especially, when a person's nose may already be irritated due to a cold or the flu. Thus, placing the virucidal treated ply between the outer plies of the three-ply facial tissue can reduce nasal irritation due to virucidal treated tissues.
In order to treat the middle tissue ply with a virucidal solution without treating the outer plies, converting machinery is needed to separate the three plies so the middle ply can be treated separately, after which the plies are recombined. Another possibility is to treat the middle ply first, and then add the outer plies downstream of the treatment operation. In either case, if a manufacturer does not possess machines having this processing capability they must purchase new converting machines or rebuild existing machines to accommodate the above processes. If the virucidal treated product is needed in limited quantities, the necessary capital expenses can prevent cost effective production of such products. Therefore, what is needed is a process for treating the middle ply of a three-ply web without requiring new or rebuilt converting equipment.